The Yukon, the mighty Yukon, is surely now become a gigantic river, its deep blue waters carrying a tide as great as the St. Lawrence. We are making a record trip, Ogilvie by 11 A. M., and Dawson, sixty miles below, in three more hours! So the captain cheerily avers--the fuller current and deeper tide of waters carrying us the more swiftly.
The mountains are lower, more rounded in outline, fir and golden aspen and now red-leaved birch forests covering them to their summits. The air is cold and keen. Ice at night, grey fogs at dawn, clear blue sky by the time the sun feebly warms at nine or ten o'clock.
We are reaching lands where the ground is frozen solid a few feet below the summer thaws, and the twilight still lingers till nine o'clock. They tell us the days are shortening, but it is hard to credit it, so long is yet the eventime.
I shall mail this letter at Dawson and send you yet another before we go down the river to the Behring Sea.
To-day I saw the first gulls, white and brown, some ducks on wing, many ravens and but few eagles. We are having a great trip, worth all the time and effort to get here--on the brink of the Arctic north, and in one of the yet but half-explored regions of the earth.
DAWSON, YUKON TERRITORY, } Thursday, September 10, 1903. }
We came in on Tuesday afternoon, the steamer "White Horse" having had an unusually good run. As we descended the river the stream grew larger, wider, with more water, and when we passed the White River the blue water there changed to a muddy white, discolored by the turgid, whitish tide of that stream. It must flow somewhere through beds of the white volcanic ash, that for so many miles marks the banks of the Yukon with its threadlike white line a foot or two below the surface soil.
As we passed the swift water of Klondike shoals and rounded in toward the landing, our own hoarse whistle was replied to by several steamers lying at the various wharfboats. We were ahead of time;--our arrival was an event.
The town lies well, upon a wide bottom, and now begins to climb the back hill to a secondary flat. It is laid off with wide streets, the chief of which are graveled and fairly kept. There are a few brick buildings, but most are of wood, here and there an old-time (six years old) log building appearing among the more modern ones built of sawed lumber--for logs are now too precious and too costly to squander.